Much of the information presented to computer users today is presented using a tree structure. A tree structure, when referring to a computer user interface, is a structure where groups are associated with entities within the groups which may be associated with even more refined entities within a group. It provides a hierarchical view of a collection of information. An example of this would be a tree structure (a part of which is shown in FIG. 1) where the countries of the world are listed, each country containing its associated states, each state containing its associated counties and each county having its associated towns. As shown in FIG. 1 when looking at North Carolina, much of the tree is not visible on the screen due to the substantial amount of information contained within the tree.
A large percentage of network management programs today are required to be scalable. In order to manage a large number of users with respect to different applications, the applications must group users and networks in some form of hierarchy. The hierarchy is typically mapped on to the tree display for the user of the program. As seen in FIG. 1, as the number of users and information in the tree increase, the tree becomes difficult to view, search and manage. Simple search mechanisms are typically offered and these have limited use for finding simple strings within the data. There are no known methods or systems for providing a contextual search within the hierarchy of a tree. A need exists for an uncomplicated method to subset and display hierarchical information to a user without significantly increasing the screen clutter and requiring significant amounts of screen space.
In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide an efficient means for searching hierarchically organized information. It is another object of the present invention to minimize the screen utilization introduced by this searching mechanism. It is yet another objective to provide means for the user to receive additional information or assistance in the searching without requiring additional screen space. It is yet another object of the present invention to enable the user to fold levels of information that are currently uninteresting without disturbing the association with parent nodes.
The present invention achieves the foregoing objects by providing a method, system and program product for searching hierarchical trees more effectively. The hierarchical set of information has at least three pieces of information contained at each node of the tree. The three components are (1) the data contained at the node (2) a text entry field for a subset key for the node, and (3) the count of children for the node. This enables more efficient searching and reporting of the information contained within the hierarchical structure.